As an aircraft is approaching, landing, taxiing, or taking-off from an airport, flight crew awareness of the position and state of other aircraft and vehicles operating in proximity to the airport (“airport traffic”) may mitigate, reduce, or prevent traffic collisions, near misses, or other incidents. Commercial aircraft and many military and private aircraft may be equipped with an automatic position broadcast system, such as automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (“ADS-B”). An aircraft or other vehicle equipped with ADS-B periodically broadcasts its position and other information to other aircraft or ground stations within receiving range. The receiving aircraft (“ownship”) may then use the broadcasted information to track the position and state of the traffic within proximity to the airport and display this data to the flight crew for increased operational awareness. Ownship may also have other means of detecting and sensing traffic and vehicle position, velocity, and other information, such as adapted weather radar.
At a busy airport, there may be scores of aircraft and other vehicles broadcasting position and state information within range of the airport. Even if the relevant airport traffic is limited to a given volume, e.g. traffic operating at or below 1000 feet and within 3 nm beyond the ends of the runways, the number of aircraft and other vehicles may still prove too many to make display to the flight crew effective. Hazardous, potentially hazardous, or other relevant airport traffic may be best identified in the context of runway related operations of the vehicles and relative ownship and traffic positions and velocities. For example, during ownship taxi, traffic taking off or on approach/landing may be hazardous, while during ownship takeoff or approach/landing, runway related taxi traffic or takeoff and approach/landing traffic on an intersecting runway is potentially hazardous.
However, integration of broadcast traffic tracking and display systems with airport map databases or other source of runway, taxiway, or taxi route locations at an airport may not be feasible, practical, or cost effective, making deterministic identification of runway related traffic not possible. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.